Anthony Barr has had years to think about the moment Josh Allen jumped clean over him. Now retired, the four-time Pro Bowl linebacker is finally talking about it in detail — and he’s not bitter. On the debut season of his new podcast, Bent Outta Shape, co-hosted with former Vikings teammate Eric Kendricks, Barr walked through the play frame by frame, and the retelling is as good as the moment itself.
“He hurdled me, OK. He jumped over me like I was a child,” Barr told Kendricks on the podcast. “And he flew through the air, Jordan-esque, right? Boom. And I didn’t even go low, which was the crazy part. I was going for a form tackle … and I just tackled air. And I’m like, ‘Hold on. Where did he go?’ He’s still running.”
Barr didn’t stop there. He explained why he can live with being the answer to a trivia question for the rest of his life.
“Josh was also so young, he was like, fearless,” Barr continued. “He still is pretty fearless … And I will say, I’m happy that it was Josh Allen who did that to me. If it was Joe Schmo, I couldn’t live with that. But, OK. It was a future NFL MVP. Hey, if that’s going to be played forever, whatever. I can live with that.”
The Play That Started It All
Context matters here, and it’s easy to lose it 12 years into Allen’s career. This wasn’t some established franchise quarterback toying with a defense. The hurdle happened in Week 3 of the 2018 season — Allen’s second career start. The Bills beat the Vikings 27-6 that day, and it was the first win of Allen’s career, regular season or playoffs. He was a rookie with four college starts worth of Wyoming tape behind him and nothing proven at the NFL level yet.
Barr, at 6-foot-5 and 255 pounds, squared up to make a form tackle. Allen never gave him the chance. He left his feet, cleared Barr’s frame entirely, and kept running like nothing happened. The image spread fast — Buffalo Rumblings reported at the time that the play spawned a wave of photoshopped tweets under the hashtag #JoshAllenJumpingOverThings, and even Bills coaches were fielding questions about it that week. Then-offensive coordinator Brian Daboll called it “a good play” while noting the team wanted its franchise quarterback to be smarter with his body going forward.
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Game | Bills 27, Vikings 6 — Week 3, 2018 |
| Allen’s career start number | 2nd |
| Result for Allen | First career win |
| Barr’s size | 6-foot-5, 255 pounds |
| Allen’s career wins since | 95-plus regular season and postseason combined |
Why the Clip Still Holds Up
Seven-plus years later, Allen has built the résumé that makes the hurdle feel less like a fluke and more like an early preview. He’s an MVP, a perennial MVP contender, and the owner of some of the most replayed highlights in modern NFL history — including the touchdown pass to himself and the dive for the pylon against the 49ers during the 2024 season. None of that existed yet when he cleared Barr. All anyone knew in September 2018 was that the Bills had a rookie quarterback willing to launch his body over a Pro Bowl linebacker rather than get tackled.
That’s the part Barr’s podcast comments capture well. He’s not just recounting a highlight — he’s explaining, from the ground, what it looked like to realize a rookie he was supposed to bring down had already decided he wasn’t going down.
Barr retired from the NFL as a four-time Pro Bowler after a nine-year career, primarily with the Vikings. Bent Outta Shape, his podcast with Kendricks, is in its first season.
